


you and me at the end of the world

by TheFamousFireLadyM



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Lunar Interlude, Magcretia - Freeform, Missing Scene, except only one half has all their memories, let magnus bond with the voidfish 2k19, pre-Wonderland, unfortunately this is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 11:14:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17466515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFamousFireLadyM/pseuds/TheFamousFireLadyM
Summary: Taking place immediately after Magnus' scene in Lunar Interlude episode 50.Magnus realizes something will inevitably change after he speaks to the Director, but he can't bring himself to ask.





	you and me at the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strikereurekapitcrew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikereurekapitcrew/gifts).



> Happy Candlenights, Lyx!! From your secret fanfic santa!  
> I can't write anything happy ever, and for that I apologize, but please forgive me for doing a hit.

When Magnus comes to her, standing there in her quarters, his hair is wet, and his skin is cold, and clammy, and his fingertips are pruned, like he’d been in water. He smells familiar, like ichor, like a hundred years ago, and some part of her tightens in fear, and worry, and wonder. Some tiny aching part of her wants him to know now, wants to tell him, even if he wouldn’t be able to understand it. She wonders if Davenport let him in like this, blazing with a kind of manic energy she can feel radiating off him in waves. 

She doesn’t ask what he’s doing there. She knows he wouldn’t answer anyway, the way he’s looking at her. All she wants now is for the questions to cease, just for a moment, and she’s waiting for him to speak, but he doesn’t. He falls headlong toward her in a blink, and she doesn’t flinch.

He kisses her the second he steps in the door, and it’s like they’re kids again, a hundred years ago. He cups her face in his hands, mouth slotting to hers like they were made for this, made for each other, and she realizes with a pang he’s finally grown into them, his big worker’s hands. Magnus pauses, watching her undress with a hunger she finds familiar in a way that sparks a blaze in her. Her fingers pause on the buttons of her blouse, and Magnus is staring. He doesn’t care about the way she looks, how  _ old _ she must be compared to him. That thought alone is what keeps her going. 

Magnus works in between her legs, a knee pressing his weight to the mattress, leaning them both to the right, and he eases her back against the bed. His hands cascade down her sides, and down her thighs, and he parts them with ease, and she’s inwardly begging him to undress. 

“You okay with this, Luce?” Magnus asks, and the way he’s looking at her eats her up inside, an inferno, a blaze, she blinks and its just under her skin. 

“Uh-huh.” 

Magnus’ fingers pause where they’re undoing his belt, and the lack of attention, her focus blasted out to the distant stars, is killing her. He works his pants down off his hips, before kicking them off. His toned legs are covered in thick scars, and the faintest dusting of auburn hair. If she focuses, she thinks she could count every freckle that littered his naked body. “I need a firm yes, Lucretia.” 

“ _ Please _ ,” she says, and his lips are tugged into a loose smile. His palm skims up her flank, and she quivers. He can see it in the way her lips move, when he cants his palm up across her thigh, just brushing the inside of it. Lucretia’s legs flex, and Magnus leans in to plant a wet kiss just so, at the curve of her knee. It gets a gasp from her, and Magnus is thrilled. His stomach dips, and he takes a moment, just to soak it all in. Lucretia is there, panting, waiting for his touch, and who is he to hold it from her. 

He tips his mouth to hers, and Lucretia surges toward him. Her mouth slots in perfectly against his, and her long nails card through the short hair curling on the side of his head. Her hand cradles the curve of his skull, fingers combing through the thick of it, closing around it. It’s a gentle touch, a tender one, and she does it without thinking. When it is they pull apart, Lucretia’s lips open, moist, and Magnus is breathing hard. 

“Mag--”

“Yeah, I got ya.” Magnus says, low, voice almost a purr. She shivers. His fingers curl a tempo across the inside of her thigh, so close and yet so far. 

She takes his hand, fingers outstretched, and pulls the proffered digits to her lips. “Magnus…” She breathes, and it takes all of his willpower not to lose it right there, legs wobbling across the silken bedspread. 

“You’re so good, Luce.” He says, and he means it. Her eyes, a snowstorm, gets him lost in an instant. “So beautiful.” 

Lucretia takes his thumb into her mouth; it swipes across the fullness of her lips, the color of plums, bruised and sweet. His breath hitches, and the way she’s looking at him makes his knees weak. Her breath is soft, a moan, and Magnus grins. It's almost a rictus, his focus entirely on her. It sweeps through her like a hurricane, and she’s breathless, searching, reaching for him. 

Magnus takes her hand, pressing his mouth to the center of her palm. His lips are dry but not unpleasantly so, both his hands enveloping just the one of hers, delicately. Even now, she marvels at the sight of her hand compared to his. 

“I love you,” he says, lips on her palm, and his words may be muffled but her heart hears them clear as day. Her throat tightens, and she swallows once, trying to get past the lump in her throat. Magnus can tell, and he pauses when she seems to be in distress. 

“We can stop if you want to.” 

Lucretia, gaze frozen, stops, and tips her head to the side. In an instant, she’s crushing Magnus’ mouth to her own. He grasps at her shoulder, then her neck, fingers curling uneasily around the nape of it. “No,  _ no, _ I’m sorry, Magnus, I,” her hands are curled just over the edge of Magnus’ broad shoulders. “I was just… distracted.” 

He knows distraction, he knows it like he knows the Voidfish. Like it’s so close to being fully understood, but there’s something,  _ something  _ in the way of his mind’s comprehension.

“How about I distract you with something else?” The words just slip out, like he knows her, like he understands her, but he understands her the way he understands the Voidfish. 

That pulls a smile to her lips, and he knows, he can see the pain that lingers in her eyes, and he wonders if he’s the cause, or maybe if it’s something he’ll never know, let alone understand. At that moment, it strikes him that Lucretia must be incredibly lonely. He eases in, and presses his lips to hers, a chaste kiss, but it’s one that seems to last past their hearts beating in time. All she hears is the sound of blood rushing in her ears like the ocean, like the roar of fire, and her heart aches with it, and she threads both hands through his beard, palms catching on the rough angles of Magnus’ jaw. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and Lucretia’s fingertips dig into the flesh of his cheeks. Her eyes settle shut, and his words echo to her, to a hundred years ago, to them, young and fresh, and he lifted her hands to his lips, and kissed them, and said the same thing before her own actions tore him away from her. 

“Magnus--” 

“I  _ know _ ,” he says, and kisses her throat. “It’s a stupid thing to say, but I mean it.” His mouth travels down another half inch, between her breasts. Lucretia’s mouth twists into a gasp, and she wants to lift her hands to rake them down his back, but she stops. “Easy, now, Luce. I promise.” 

“ _ Magnus _ ,” she pleads, fingers digging into the pillows behind her head. He feels like she’s going to burst, her heart pounding in her chest loud enough to drown out everything else. All she is now is Magnus’ mouth on her flesh, her nails pinpoints in the blue silk of her pillow, and every muscle in her body is taut, and the throbbing thump of her heart and her veins and every single inch of her aches for him. 

He guides her thighs to his shoulders, large hands looping around her calves, smooth, tense, shaking with every moment he doesn’t give it to her. 

“Magnus,” Lucretia says, and he lifts his head to look at her, and she’s lost in his eyes. Magnus smiles, and licks his lips, and a longing throbs through her, and when she arches toward him, a hand scraping through his hair, he chuckles, and the vibrations score through her. He opens his mouth, and it’s a heat she knows well, and how she  _ missed _ him. Her heart fills her chest, and she hiccups, throat closing up, eyes burning, and Magnus stops--

“Luce?” He asks, and she lifts a hand to her eyes, splayed across her face. Her mouth is twisted into a frown, and her shoulders are shaking. “ _ Lucretia.”  _ Magnus reaches out to touch her. He takes her wrist in his hand, and the contact makes her startle. 

“I’m fine,” she says, and he lets go. “Can you… come closer?” She asks, and he moves in, his hand coming up to rest on her cheek. 

“What’s wrong?” His face is soft, sympathetic, and Magnus’s thumb is scarred from years and years of woodworking, but it’s  _ gentle _ on her cheek. It dips in, tracing the track of her tears as one fat tear drops. 

“Promise you won’t laugh?” 

Magnus brushes her mouth with his own, gaze lowered, but the way he looks at her is sweetly, kindly, like he’d never pull away. He’s holding her gaze like two magnets. It’s green, verdant, like open fields of grass, like the ocean of their home plane.  “Promise.” 

“Can we forget about, what we were doing?” Lucretia asks, and pulls Magnus in closer. He draps an arm around her waist, and eases her in close to him. 

“Yeah, we-we don’t have to, you know..” Magnus says, and his hand goes up her thigh, up past the rise of her hips, before closing around her back. Her arms wrap around his neck, and she settles against him with a sigh. 

“I’m afraid, Magnus.” She says, and in an instant his entire demeanor changes, and he moves as if to pull away. She knows, he thinks, she knows what he’s been up to. “ _ No _ , no, it’s not anything you’re doing, you don’t have to stop.” Lucretia sighs, again, and works her lip through her teeth. “I’m afraid for you, for  _ us. _ ” 

“You don’t have to be.” Magnus begins to reply, and Lucretia’s eyes shut tight, and she turns her head away and that stops his words in his throat. 

“Don’t tell me you can fight it, because  _ that’s what I’m afraid of. _ ” Her voice breaks, and Magnus simply holds her in his arms, a hand cradling the back of her head, the other low on the curve of her hips. She clutches at him tighter, her mouth pressed to his shoulder. “I’m afraid that something is gonna come that you won’t be able to fight.” 

“This isn’t about  _ us _ , is it?” Magnus ventures, and by the way Lucretia doesn’t even attempt an answer, he knows. It’s about the Bureau. It’s about whatever it is they’re off to next. It’s dangerous, and he knows this, and so does she, but the fact that she’s afraid makes his heart clench in his chest. His fingers ply at her hair, and she remains silent. 

“I wish I could tell you,” Lucretia mumbles, muffled in his arms, and he falls quiet, holding his breath to hear her. Again, he’s struck by the idea that Madam Director is incredibly lonely, and his heart aches for her.

Magnus doesn’t know what he could say to that, and the room falls silent. He can’t tell if she’s sleeping, but he doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to rouse her from whatever peace she’s gotten. Under that thought, he knows, he’s being selfish, and he wants to hold her as long as he can before they leave the next day, to pick up another relic. Her words leave a sick feeling in the pit of his gut, and Magnus can’t really shake off the sensation of dread. It pricks at his heart like an icy needle, and he has trouble falling asleep.

Lucretia settles in Magnus’ thick arms, and she finds it difficult to drift to sleep. Magnus hasn’t moved since, and she doesn’t want to wake him. His steady breathing lulls her, brings her some kind of comfort, and Lucretia tucks her head in close to his chest. His heartbeat under her ear is soothing, and his arms tighten around her, unbidden. She does not realize, but soon after she drifts into a dreamless sleep. 

She rouses to the sight of the empty bed beside her, and her gaze carries to beside it, and Magnus hauling his pants up. He doesn’t seem to notice she’s awake until he turns to kiss her on the cheek goodbye. When she catches a glimpse of his face, he looks ragged, and there’s distinct sleepless bruising under his eyes. He fights the urge to look her fully in the face, and she notices. She wonders what it is he’s thinking about, what it is that chased sleep from him. She knows, now, that whatever it is, he’s keeping it a secret from her. Deliberately. It aches, but she knows he has every right to be suspicious. She knows, the way she knows the smell of the Voidfish’s tank, from long distant memory, the way it still lingers in her olfactory senses, and brings her back to the day Magnus first kissed her. It lingers still in his hair. 

“Magnus, we need to talk--” 

“Yeah, sure thing, Luce. Can it wait until  _ after _ we come back from this next job?” He says, and it’s brushing her off. Something about the way he says it hurts her, delicately, like a stab through her chest with a pane of glass.

“I’d prefer it if we spoke,  _ now _ , before you go.” What she doesn’t know is that he’s aching to actually speak to her, face to face, all of this pretense gone, but he knows that if he does, what they have might cease. And he’s afraid that if, after he knows what exactly Lucretia is hiding from him, he’ll want it to end. It can wait, if only for his own selfish reasons.

“I know, I got it.” He takes her wrists, hands folded over each other, in both his hands, careful as can be, and presses a sweet kiss to the corner of her lips. “I  _ know _ , Luce. I promise nothing  bad’ll happen to me.” Magnus levels his gaze at her, green on blue. Something about it makes her stomach lurch anyway, like it’s a hundred years ago and they just met, the same way it does every single time he looks at her. “I love you.” 

Lucretia dips her head, and he can tell he flustered her, because when she looks back at him, it’s cool, calm Madame Director in her place. “Promise me, as soon as you get back, you and I will talk.” 

“ _ Yeah _ ,” Magnus says, knowing he’ll have questions upon questions to ask, but now was not the time, sauntering back toward the door behind him. “I promise. A hundred thousand times promise. It’ll be there and back sooner than you know. You can count on it.” 

A thin smile, sad, and more fearful than anything else climbs across Lucretia’s lips as the door swings shut behind him, and the fear fills her like a torrential downpour, and she can’t help but stop her words from coming, even though Magnus can’t even hear her anymore. “I love you too.” 


End file.
